Blurred Of Month

Online reviews have become a bedrock of the multi-billion-dollar beauty industry. You really think you aren’t getting involved?

- Jessica Chia

It’s Saturday night, you’re somewhere in the city, and the queue for the toilets is long. Like, 15 people long. Some are staring at their phone, some are glancing out at the dance floor wistfully, like kids in detention watching the rest of the school have fun on the playground. The woman in front of you is wearing the most incredible red lipstick you’ve ever seen, a vibrant red that skews orange when the strobe light hits it. Not too matte, not too shiny. Is she the online beauty reviewer Dragon Girl? You don’t know, but you have to ask.

So you do. What unfolds is natural: the two of you share a tenuous but palpable bond, right there, in the queue for the toilets, over that red lipstick. You were looking for something, somebody else discovered it, and you found that person. Chatting about lipstick turns into chatting about life. Maybe you become friends, or maybe you never see each other again. But you got the shade name. And the horizon of your world spreads a bit broader.

Until you find out Dragon Girl wasn’t a girl at all, but an influencer planted there to tug on that thread of beauty curiosity. Or a robot programmed to spew praise at anybody it registers as a human woman aged between 28 and 40. Or a lipstick brand masquerading as a beauty reviewer on a large retailer’s website. “The perfect red-orange,” she says. “Just the right amount of matte-to-shine ratio!”